Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

While Christmas is about family, many in Atlantic Canada, indeed, the West, are asking “Where did it go”? Where are the numbers? Populations are shrinking rapidly and industrialized countries, from Japan to Canada, are increasingly looking for immigration to fill the gap. Charles Cirtwell, from the Atlantic Institute of Market Studies, just published a report on how Atlantic Canada could reach Third World status in the next few years without more people, more tax payers, and more workers.

Why? What happened?

Well, according to some, the feminist movement has discouraged women from having families for the false God of career and “independence.” Many women who were calling in today expressed similar sentiments that it is impossible to “have it all” – a career and a truly balanced home life (something has to give); while a woman’s right to choose in the abortion debate seems like a fair way out of male pressure or common mistakes, what has actually killed more babies than abortion is the active choice, by working women, to have either smaller families or none at all; as a result millions of people have been unborn; millions of children never had a chance. It is the sin of omission. And we will pay for it economically.

Yes, children are more expensive – life is more expensive. But is economics, alone, the reason for the decline of the Western family?

It seems to some women listeners to my broadcast today that mother’s in the 1980s told their girls that having a family must come second, if at all, to the self-actualization fulfillment of a career, or a career direction which could be side-tracked by family choices.

Similarly, boys were removed from their role as providers since doing so could be interpreted as imprisonment and an attempt to tyrannize; and if Motherhood was no longer special, or a desired goal by young women, how far down the list does you think fatherhood was for boys then?

Just as we have seen, as a cultural change, attitudes adjusted with regard to, for example, drinking and driving, so we have undergone a social change with regard to the nuclear families’ place in society. Whereas before the family was seen as a goal and a role, today it is seen as an option for women – an option fraught within the maelstrom of a 50 per cent divorce rate. Marriage is still an option – even with a large family in tow. There are no rules, anything goes. Having a family could actually be a nuisance and get in the way.

But are women any happier today? Are men?

The last thing you will ever say on your death bed is that you wish you could’ve spent more time at the office — the opposite is true when it comes to loved ones.

The simple truth is that our culture is, literally, dying out relative to others. That is why we need immigration. In the Western world we call that success.

You’ve come a long way baby.